Land use planning creating rural territories with and without electricity in Maranhão, Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

This article deals with the rural electrification policy in the state of Maranhão, Brazilian Amazon. The purpose of the research was to analyze the spatial distribution of municipalities of this state, of which some residents, according to results of the 2017 Agricultural Census, declared they had access to electricity, while others declared they did not have access to electricity. It is known that the Amazon
region is the largest producer of hydropower in Brazil. The analytical basisof the article was carried out through an approach on land use planning, rural electrification policies, and energy generation in the Amazon. For the data survey, the results of the Agricultural Census (Excel format) were used, as well as the Municipal Agricultural Production and the energy generation data from ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency). The combination of these data was included in the ArcGIS software, generating a map of spatial distribution of rural electrification in municipalities of the state of Maranhão. The results indicate that the diffusion of electric energy in the rural areas of Maranhão is predominantly distributed in municipalities that produce soy. It is concluded that the policy of land use planning, based on rural electrification in the Amazon, favored agribusiness territories and produced areas with and without electricity.